College playoff still lacking Texas flair

Clemson beat Notre Dame in the Cotton Bowl, a CFP semifinal, on Saturday in Arlington. Despite the nation’s best high school postseason, Texas’ Division I teams have yet to play in the College Football Playoff.

Photo: Kevin C. Cox /Getty Images

The College Football Playoff came to Arlington on Saturday, and it had quite an act to follow. A week earlier, AT&T Stadium hosted an event that drew three times as many total fans and featured more drama, in a fairer system to boot.

The only teams snubbed at the Texas high school football championships are private schools. And after the way Notre Dame played Saturday, that doesn’t seem like such a drawback.

But there’s an even bigger difference between these two football spectacles, and as the ceaseless conversation about how to improve the college system continues, one change in particular could increase its popularity and provide a dimension it has lacked.

What the CFP really needs is a team from Texas, isn’t it?

Five years into this new era, the state with the nation’s best high school postseason still hasn’t had an entry in the college one, and maybe that’s one of the reasons people are getting restless for change. Of 20 total entries in the four-team playoff so far, Alabama, Clemson, Ohio State and Oklahoma have hogged a staggering 15 of them.

The whole thing is starting to feel a bit repetitive, which might work for a league that can hype another meeting of LeBron James and Steph Curry but doesn’t work as well when the most recognizable names are Nick Saban and Dabo Swinney.

College football always has been regional, but lately the most important games have been limited to fewer regions than ever. Another state that has yet to participate in the CFP despite a huge population overflowing with high school prospects?

That would be California, whose major programs are starting to make Texas’ championship-starved colleges look dominant by comparison.

Expanding the playoff is one option to get more teams — and television markets — involved, and that might happen sooner than you expect. Even though the playoff’s contract with ESPN runs through the 2024 season in its current form, there has been increased discussion about the stakeholders possibly making an adjustment halfway through the 12-year deal, which would be after next season.

If they choose to expand to eight teams, that could mean all five major conference champions would receive an automatic bid, and there would be room for an upstart such as Central Florida, which hasn’t lost a game in two years but hasn’t even sniffed a playoff bid.

That could work, as it theoretically could make the regular season even more important (every league championship counts!) while encouraging teams to play even more tough nonconference games. Sooner or later, this is where the sport is headed.

But in the meantime, either Tom Herman or Jimbo Fisher can take it upon themselves to solve the CFP’s lack-of-Texas problem without any rule changes.

Both coaches had a tangible reason to believe Saturday their programs aren’t too far off from belonging. Of the four teams featured in this year’s CFP semifinals, the only one that entered Saturday with a loss was Oklahoma, which lost to Texas.

And of the other three semifinalists, which one had been pushed the hardest in the regular season?

That would have been Clemson, which escaped Texas A&M with a two-point victory back in September.

Clearly, Herman and Fisher have the kind of players who can at least hang with the best teams in the nation, and both of them are collecting more. On signing day earlier this month, Fisher hauled in the country’s third-best recruiting class, per composite rankings by 247 Sports. Herman’s class was ranked ninth.

For the Aggies and Longhorns, though, the problem never has been attracting talent or making money. The nation’s two richest athletic departments have the right infrastructure and the right recruiting ground, but year after year have watched some CFP participants do more with less (Michigan State, Washington) while others get there with stars they either had in their backyards or on their campuses (J.T. Barrett, Baker Mayfield, Kyler Murray).

Even if Herman and Fisher don’t have to coach against each other, the race to the CFP is as intense as ever, because UT and A&M historically almost never have been great at the same time, and because whoever gets over the CFP hump first might be able to run the other one out of his job.

Maybe both will fail. Neither Clemson nor Alabama looks like it is going to cede its stranglehold on CFP invitations any time soon, and both Herman and Fisher coach in conferences that should feature plenty of challenges next year.

But the CFP needs improvement, and two coaches control the simplest solution.

This year, the playoff came to Texas.

Eventually, Herman and Fisher would like to flip that sentence around.

Mike Finger has worked for the Express-News since 1999, writing about the Texas Longhorns, the Big 12, the NBA and the NFL before becoming a sports columnist. He's covered 13 Spurs postseasons, six Final Fours and more than a dozen college bowl games.